Exquisite Surrender
by superlabelgirl
Summary: In the midst of his murder, Equius reflects on his life, and why nothing has ever felt quite like dying. Long Equius headspace fic. Rated T for violence, abuse, D/s themes. Please R&R.
1. Dying

(A.N.: I know that in Homestuck, Equius is played like a creep for laughs, but I'm actually really interested in his character. What would it be like to be a physically powerful, naturally submissive enforcer of a forgotten system? How would his obligations and desires conflict with his individuality? Thus, I wrote this thing. It was originally supposed to be a one shot, but it ended up being long so I'm splitting it up into chapters. Please rate and review, I love feedback.)

It's difficult explain how it felt to kneel before him. How it felt when he forced you to tense your muscles around an arrow that he put inside of you. How it felt as he wrapped the wire of a bow around your neck, pulling it get tighter and tighter. How he tightened it until your vision was clouded, and your reason was gone, and he stole everything you held dear. To have nothing left but his smile, and your pain, and the blue blood pouring out of your body, around his feet, as his body hurts yours, breaks yours.

Dominates yours.

It's difficult to explain the climax he drove you to. It was more than physical, more than emotional, more anything you can describe. You had never felt anything as intense as his skinny arms flexing to hurt you, or as your own muscled arms, so capable of breaking his lanky frame in half, laying docile beneath him. This would be it. This would be your life's climax. Your sad little life story would get no dénouement, no slow winding down, no peaceful drifting off. He chose to end you with a final pinnacle of emotion, of sensation, of fulfillment. He was extracting your life from you, taking your every thought or emotion, your every obligation or desire. He took your every living experience and made them smaller and smaller, purer and purer, cutting you off from the world. You felt your very essence shrinking as the world grew hazy. Every joy grew more joyful, every pain more painful, every wonder and horror becoming bright and clear. You became little more than a brightly colored singularity, ready to be swallowed by a sea of black, of void, of power.

There is no experience in life quite like dying.

They would wonder, when you were no more than one of his chosen corpses, why you died smiling. Why you sweated in death as well as in life. Why you hadn't stopped him from murdering you. These questions held no meaning for you, as the answer was lost in his body dominating yours, his blood dominating yours. It was lost as he made you an effortless sacrifice to his artistic psychosis, his violent vision for a mural of multicolored blood.

They never realized. It was always about the blood.


	2. Blue Blood

Ever since the adult trolls left, the plan for troll life was always hazy at best. The little grubs had lusi to keep them alive, but as for their destinies, as for what they were really supposed to be, nothing was every clear. The only clues were tied up in forbidden stories, in secret journals, in forgotten histories.

And in blood.

You have known this, known it better than any other troll you had encountered. Something inside you could not forget or ignore what troll blood holds. Without schools to teach you, without adult voices to guide you, you know that blood is the only real identity behind the grey anonymity of skin. There is more of the past in blood than in hidden heirlooms, more of the future there than in vague dreams, more of the present there than the others wanted to admit. Trolls' blood holds what you are, what you were, what you will be.

What you should be.

There was a system in this blood, once, that all trolls understood. It was called the hemospectrum ,and it wasn't hard to understand. It was even color-coded for convenience. The purple-blooded were cultured, cruel, powerful, and perfect. They had unflinching certainty that the world was theirs, and when it was not, they made it so. The blues were their support, the muscle that kept the beautiful rainbow in place. The blues ensured that the other trolls kept their places, with the green serving the public, the yellow powering the stations, and the brown and dark red as the filthy, solid ground on which the society could tread. They kept very color perfectly where it should be. The purples ruled the world, but the blues kept the order. They prevented the colors from drifting apart, from becoming isolated fragments, from creating a selfish anarchy where nothing could root or grow.

You were born the essence of blue, the only color compass in a world without direction. Something in your blood cried out against your entire generation. Your peers knew their colors, but they only used them for childish taunts and otherwise forgot about them. You tried to correct them, but you could not do it on your own. Your body was strong, but you could only further break what needed to be put back together. Your command was powerful, but your attempts to organize these colored beings only drew them further away from you. You were a powerful muscle spasming violently, moving with purpose but without direction, unable to fix this broken system. It was not that you weren't intelligent, in your own way. You kept your language pristine, your knowledge current, and could even create robotic beings that could withstand your touch. You simply did not have the right kind of mind for rebuilding the system. You could enforce, but you could not plan. You could crush, but you could not dominate.

In the end, you were only Equius the blue blood. Like the horses that were your namesake, you were a proud, powerful beast. Weaker, more cunning beings had conquered and used your kind for generations, and now you needed this. For all of your strength, you were thoroughly tamed. You needed someone to ride you, to steer you, to make you carry out their will.

You needed a master.

When you turned to the only land-dwelling purple blood to be found, that glorious caste that had shaped the world according to its will, you found him a crass, intoxicated, naively egalitarian disgrace. You wanted to be his tool, but he would not have you. He had no desires, no plans to break and re-mould these disobedient fragments, no orders for you to carry out on the insolent masses. In fact, when you told him to stop poisoning himself and command you properly, he obliged as if your will was worth more than his own. It was in the throes of your frustration with him, your ache to serve him and your hatred at his unworthiness, that you saw what you had become. You were no more than a piece of an ancient machine, destined to run something that did not exist.

Needless to say, you started becoming... odd after that.


	3. Strong

Because of your failed attempts to organize your peers and your habit of accidentally injuring them with the lightest touches, you came to remove yourself from most of your fellow trolls. You spent most of your time with in your room, your lusus Arthour and your machines your only company. As you grew, your strength and your frustration grew with you. Soon, you scarcely knew what you were capable of, for fear of what trying would do. Even Arthour, one of the strongest beasts in the kingdom, bruised under your touch. With no outlet for your strength and your desires, you didn't trust yourself to control your own body. You yearned desperately to give yourself to someone who would make better use of you than you ever could, but this very lack made your terrifying body shake with even more uncontrollable rage.

You became as good at creating robots out of necessity. You needed to have an approximate being that you weren't afraid to touch. At first, they gave way like tinfoil under a light grasp, almost as weak as flesh. Since you could not hold back your body, you simply had to make them stronger. Soon you could grasp them without them breaking, even hit them lightly without them immediately falling apart. You had to actually try to break them, and trying felt good. Suddenly, your rage had an outlet, and you destroyed them as you had not let yourself destroy anything else.

The stronger you made them, the less you had to hold back. The less you held back, the more you could fight. The more you fought, the stronger you became. And the stronger you became, the stronger you had to make them.

You drove yourself into a mad frenzy with this cycle, and entire sweeps of your life were spent building and becoming stronger. Fighting your own creations, you not only got to unleash your fury, but you also got to be subdued. You couldn't fully explain what it was that you about being physically overpowered, being beaten senseless, that you liked just as much as destroying. Perhaps it was your need to be put in your place being met in the most artificial of ways. Perhaps you merely needed to know that something was capable of stopping you. Regardless, you relished those fights, even when your flesh bruised, your skin tore, your teeth fell out. One particularly stubborn creation actually managed to pull the tip off of one of your horns before you flipped it over and smashed its head to bits against the floor. As you bled over the broken parts, you panted breathlessly, tired and triumphant and broken and utterly satisfied.

As hard as you tried to keep interaction with the trolls to a minimum, you slowly developed some relationships. Though you interacted with everyone at some point or another, in your dying moments, three relationships stuck out in your mind. There was the highblood, with whom you had constantly sought guidance and left in helpless fury. There was Nepeta, your unexpected but amazing moirail. And then… there was her.

It was as though fate was purposely taunting you. Aradia was the absolute lowest on the hemospectrum, the absolute scum of the earth according to the natural order. You were supposed to be disgusted by her, to want to break her, to be offended by her mere presumption that she was equal to you. You wanted to feel all of this.

And yet, you couldn't.

She was intelligent and lively from the first moment that you met her. She explored her world, understood it, and looked over it with ease. She moved with such certainty and grace that you had no doubt that her confidence was unshakable and her decisions were right. She was perfect. No matter how much rage you got into your system, how brutally you destroyed your robots, you could not direct your hatred towards her supposed inferiority. As soon as you thought of her, your rage would melt and you would be filled with a mad yearning for her that you could not fully describe. It felt distinctly red, which was scandalous enough given your disparate places, but that was not all. You realized that this lowblood had the ideal constitution for your service, that she could use you to create a better world. Horrified, you realized that you wanted the lowest of the low to become your master.

You watched her for sweeps, eternally afraid of approaching her. What if you said something kind to her and betrayed your system? What if you said something cruel to her and betrayed her perfect nature? What if you approached her, offering your service, and she rejected you as the highblood had? The thought of that terrified you more than anything else. Being rejected by someone with blood so filthy and manner so pure hurt you to even think about. You made a point to speak to her occasionally, if only so that she knew who you were, but you kept your interactions with her limited to abrupt greetings and occasional pieces of information, remaining forcefully neutral underneath your conflicting emotions.

She remained indifferent, if a bit puzzled, by your existence, and took the yellowblood psychic as a potential matesprit. Idealogically, this made sense. They were both low enough on the hemospectrum that their fraternizing and potential genetic combining was perfectly logical. Not only would it be well below your station to hold her lowblood body the way that the psychic did, but you would probably break her fragile form if you tried. You knew that their base social transaction was entirely appropriate and inoffensive, but somehow this knowledge made no impact when you started building robots with mixed red and blue eyes, or when you took great pleasure in breaking their smug lisping faces.

And then you learned that the psychic had murdered her.

For a moment, before you gathered yourself and assessed all of the relevant information, you lost the composure that you had fought so hard for. For that moment, you were entirely intent on ripping that pathetic lowblood psychic limb from limb. Learning that he had committed this vile act under the control of the blueblood deviant Vriska only made you want to add her to the body count as well. The rage simmering in your veins boiled over, and you honestly didn't know if their deaths alone would satisfy you. If Aradia was dead, why should anyone live?

You came so close to giving up your principles and sacrificing an organized hemospectrum for anarchic blood spatter. The only thing that managed to stop you was the knowledge that somehow, Aradia's spirit still existed. She wandered around as a ghost, perpetrating apathetic destruction on the world she had cared so passionately for. When you learned this, your body flooded with grief, relief, and hope. True, the object of your dear shameful love had undergone a horrible experience, and you hated that she had experienced that pain. And yet, in a way, her worthless murderers had freed her. Through her death, her pure spirit had escaped from her vile body, and now she was wandering, alone and unattached.

It was actually Vriska, one of her murderers, that made an interesting proposition to you. For some reason, she wanted you to make a robotic body for Aradia's spirit to inhabit. You forced your rage down in order to reply civilly. You hadn't thought that it was possible, but it wasn't a bad idea. You could bring Aradia back, better than ever. She behaved… differently than she had, to be sure, but you were convinced that all she needed was a new body, a better body. A body deserving of her perfect soul. You realized that you had a chance to correct fate, to allow her to start her life again, to save her. All you had to do was create a body that worthy of her soul. You paused, clear thought finally breaking its way through your fury. This would be difficult, but it would be nothing compared to having to live without her. Forcefully polite, you accepted Vriska's offer, and the two of you made your customary plans to betray each other. With your rage severely reduced, all you had to do to calm down was lock your door and destroy everything that you had ever created. When you were finished, with nothing left of your sweeps of work except component parts, you wiped your brow and began to work.


	4. Building

For the first time, you created a robot that you had absolutely no intention of destroying. You had never worked harder on anything than you did on her body. You locked yourself in your room for days, even putting up heavy curtains so that you could work in the daytime. You only ate when the threat of starvation bled through your focus. You only slept when your body briefly passed out from exhaustion. You only thought about your project, your mind never straying from making her better than anything you had made before. This couldn't merely be a robot. You had made strong robots, fast robots, even robots with rudimentary strategic abilities, but none of this would be enough. You needed to make your own master's body, with all of the benefits of being alive and none of its weaknesses. Not only did it need to be strong and fast, but it needed to think, it needed to feel. It needed to be sleek but have all of the detail of a body, superior but entirely authentic. You made it complete with mechanical bones and organs, and powered the entire machine with real blood. You drew at least half a pint of your own blood every week until you had collected enough to support the life systems of an actual living troll. Sometimes you passed out from dehydration, but this didn't dissuade you. Nothing could be too good for her, no effort too extreme. Nothing short of death would stop you from bringing her back.

You couldn't say for sure how long you worked on her, only that once the main body was built and you felt that the first stage was finished, you slept for two solid days. When you woke up, you allowed yourself a little free time. You went outside, met with Nepeta, allowed yourself to be coaxed back into normal sleeping and eating habits. After that, you spent hours each day fine tuning the chassis. You were always a perfectionist, even with robots that you destroyed shortly after making, but never more so than now. Vriska checked in on your progress periodically, but she could never know how entirely focused you were on this project, this plan that the liar had naively considered her own. You had no interest in whatever Vriska was planning for the body. Once it was perfect, you would give it directly to Aradia, saving her from the tragedy of her filthy former body. She would be ready to thank you for the second chance at life, and ready to claim you as her own.

When the body was finally ready, you delivered it to her, eager to see how she would respond. She had displayed little enthusiasm in your previous conversations together, but you didn't mind. She was a ghost, after all, and probably had a lot of trouble expressing emotions. Once she was in her body, though, she would probably be better. To be safe, you made her robotic heart, which had previously just pumped her organic blood, a center for emotional production. You gave her every emotion that you could think of, not wanting to deprive her of any sensation, although you tried to make the sadness less intense and the happiness more pleasurable. You smiled slightly at the circular logic. You wanted to make your new master happy, but that involved you creating a program to allow her to be happy. Finally, nervously, you added some code that would slip some red feelings into her blue blood, were she so inclined to accept them.

Once the body was finished, you destroyed everything in your path on your way to her. As you delivered it to her, you trembled a little. You hadn't seen her in person for nearly a sweep. She had prototyped a kernelsprite and was mentally linked to a frog that had previously inhabited it. This was a scandalous depravity that made you ashamed of how much you continued to love her. But it didn't matter. When you saw her enter the body, you knew that she would finally be united, as perfect in body as she was in soul. You waited anxiously for the soul to settle, as she controlled the limbs, blinked, turned her head. The muscle and perception hardware seemed to be working. You asked how she felt, hoping that she would like it. She seemed satisfied, until she noticed the red feelings that her mechanical heart was releasing into her organic system.

She did not like that.

She choked you, demanded that you fixed this, called you blue blood scum. You immediately realized your error, your horrible presumption, and told her that you could uninstall it. But this was not enough for her. Before she let you do anything, she dropped you roughly, reached into her own chest, and pulled out her heart. Her blood, drawn from your own body for her, poured out of her chest. Her heart, meticulously crafted for her, shattered under her grasp. She picked you up again, shook you, hit you with all of the strength you had given her. You took the beating, shocked, scandalized, but without resisting. You had been so bad, so very bad. She was merely punishing you, and without punishment you would never learn your mistake. You had been wrong to assume that she needed you to program emotions for her. Now that she had a body, she was entirely capable of feeling her own emotions. And oh, she demonstrated this exquisitely. She could feel her own anger, and when she screamed at you, her mechanical voice held more fury than you had ever heard a living being communicate. She could feel her own love, and after she punished you, she pulled you into a forceful, hungry kiss. Awestruck and humbled, you kissed her back. When you held her in your arms, she did not break.

In that moment, you had a master, and you had never been happier.

This was the happiest you two would ever be together.


	5. Loving

You had hoped that after she initially adjusted to the body, she would be ready to take you as her humble servant, to use you to improve the world around you. The forceful way that she had punished and kissed you, claimed you, made you all the more excited for being hers. But after this initial display of emotion, she quickly settled back into cold apathy, both towards the world and towards you. You offered to rebuild her emotional center, in which you would of course remove the red code that she had punished you for, but she declined. It was not that she could not feel, but rather that she had no inclination to. Lost in mapping out doomed futures, nothing mattered to her anymore.

You often made yourself present at her side, but she barely acknowledged your presence. You asked her if there was anything that you could do for her, but she almost always said no. Sometimes, when you felt particularly insecure, you would ask her if you had done anything wrong, but she only stared at you blankly and continued her work. She occasionally shared information with you or requested assistance with her chassis, but she never directly order you to do anything. Not even to leave her alone.

Once, feeling lost and confused, you had asked her for permission to speak frankly. She had narrowed her eyes, but otherwise her face had stayed blank. "You do not need my permission to speak," she said in a flat mechanical tone. You tried not to flinch as you mumbled an apology. You had given her the potential for so much range in tone, but she had no inclination to use anything other than this flat default voice. You reminded yourself that it was not your place to tell her how to speak or feel, and you held your tongue. You almost forgot what you were going to say, and but then you cleared your throat and continued.

"Mis-", you began to say, but you stopped yourself. You so wanted to say "Mistress". It seemed like the natural thing to call the young woman that you held in such high regard, but you knew she did not like it. "Aradia," you said, correcting yourself, "is there truly nothing that you want from me?"

Her face remained absolutely neutral. "What do you mean," she said. The words themselves were ordered like a question, but nothing in her tone seemed inquisitive.

You averted his eyes and tried to rephrase. "I created this body so that you could live again. I only wished for you to be able to return to the world, so you could explore it and rule it as you saw fit. I only wanted you to have the sort of happiness you used to have. But – if I may be frank, you do not seem happy. Is there truly nothing I can do for you? No task I could perform or service I could provide? Is there nothing that you want from me?"

"No," she said flatly. "There is nothing." After a pause, she spoke again. "I do not know why you address me in this way. I was grateful that you created this chassis for me, and I forgave you attempting to manipulate me into having romantic feelings for you. I do not understand why you think there is any debt of service between us."

You flinched when she mentioned the red feelings that you had tried to enact. "I'm sorry, Mis – I'm sorry, Aradia. I'm sorry." You hung your head in shame. "I should not have done that to you. It was not my place."

"It has nothing to do with place," she said, standing up as her eyes flickered slightly. "It is not something you should have done to anyone."

You nodded, still unable to look directly into her eyes. "Yes. I understand that now. If you – if you still are displeased with me for that, you may punish me in any way that you see fit. I will not resist."

"I said I had forgiven you for it," she said impassively, her eyes turning dull again. "In any case, regardless of how I view your actions, I have no right to administer your 'punishment'."

"You have every right!" you exclaimed. You tried to calm yourself, but yearning and guilt and passion was burning in you uncontrollably. "Aradia… you have every right over me." Trying to control your breathing, your sweating, your trembling, you knelt before her. Kneeling before your own creation, before the most beautiful soul you had ever known, you bowed your head low and murmured your heart to her. "I kneel before you as your humble servant," you said quietly. "Do with me what you will."

She walked over to you, looking at you with disinterest and disdain. Her eyes flashed, but her face did not move. "You are nothing to me," she said, "least of all my servant." Then she left the room, not caring if you followed or stayed.

You wish that she would have hit you. When she down looked at you, you wish that she had screamed at you, humiliated you, beat you senseless. When you saw that you had upset her, you wish she would have told you what a failure you were, broke you into pieces, and reshaped you into what she wanted you to be. Anything would have been better than leaving you alone. You would have taken any punishment without hesitation, and taken it with a smile of gratitude. You would have done anything for her, anything that she wanted. But she did not want anything. And she did not want you.

You began to seek out orders from anyone who would give them to you. You willingly obeyed Karkat, your supposed leader who exemplified a leader in neither caste nor conduct, and soon would obey nearly anyone. And although your need to serve was occasionally met this way, this didn't make you happy. It made you feel dirty and ashamed. You wanted a single master whom you could obey with absolute reverence, who would command you effortlessly, perfectly. You longed for the day when Karkat's screeching voice would bark out an order and you could laugh in his face, your true master smiling approvingly at their servant's loyalty. But these casual, rude, unthinking orders were all that were given to you, and you took them, feeling cheap and useless as you bowed whichever way the wind blew.

Regardless of this, you could not blame Aradia. She inhabited a body that you had created for her, and any fault that she had became a fault that you had made for her. Even when she looked at you like you were less than nothing, even when she would spend hours in a room without acknowledging you. Even when Nepeta found you when you thought you were alone, sobbing into your pile of broken parts, and demanded to know what she had done, you could not blame her. If she was cruel, it was only a fault you had made in her programming. If she disdained you, it was only because of how truly pathetic you were. It wasn't her fault. It could never be her fault.

This was all you could think when she started using the eyes you built to stare longingly at the yellowblood, when she left your side to embrace him in her last moments. In your mind, you can still see her right before the explosion, its beginnings blooming like a flower in her chest. Her face was relaxed in an expression of peace. Her mouth was turned in a small smile. Her eyes were closed, and in that instant you knew that they would never see you again. And then she was gone. She was nothing but the same shattered parts you had destroyed a thousand times. All you could think was that it couldn't have been her fault. That night, as Nepeta curled with you in the robotics pile that could have been easily been composed of your love, you replayed every stupid thing you had ever done in your head. It was all your fault. It had to be, because it couldn't be hers.


	6. Caring

As you laid in your robotics pile, your despair sending you into near catatonia, you were happy that you had a small pair of arms and a tail wrapped around you, keeping you from losing yourself completely. You knew that you would never be able to return the comforting hug that she held you in without hurting her, but as she wiped the tears off of your face, you placed your hand over hers very lightly. She grabbed your hand in hers, squeezing as hard as you could. You closed your eyes, letting her grasp pull you back from somewhere dark and silent. You were so glad that she was your moirail, the one person in your life that you could always depend on.

The fact that you two formed such a fast and strong morallegiance was a surprise to everyone, including to you. Her blood, while not low enough to be offensive to you, was a shade of green that could be considered lower middle class. She was also much more excitable and silly than you usually had the patience for. However, with her, it didn't seem to matter. She was simply Nepeta, and regardless of her color or antics, she fit with you in certain ways that could not be described. You both knew the aches of feeling alone. You both shared a longing towards someone who did not want you. You both plunged yourselves into your crafts, robotics and strength, shipping and hunting, trying to escape anything and everything else. You understood each other like no one else could, and you would not give her up for anything.

Even dying on your knees, you felt a brief flash of happiness when you thought of how you first met her. When you were younger and felt cooped up in your room, you used to take long walks in the woods. Navigating through the winding paths was like oil to your mental circuitry, allowing your mind to work with much greater efficiency when you returned. However, on one walk when you were about five sweeps old, your peaceful mental restoration was disturbed by a dragging sound in the woods.

You paused on your walk to investigate the sound and saw a small troll. She was strangely dressed, with a tail like a meowbeast and metallic claws attached to her hands. Even stranger than this, she was attempting to drag a dead growlbeast about five times her size through the woods. You stopped and stared at the strange sight for a moment. The small girl was having a very difficult time moving the creature. She pushed and pulled it with all her might, but only managed to move it a few inches at a time. After observing this for a few minutes in silence, you cleared your throat slightly to make yourself known.

Suddenly, the little girl hissed at you like a beast and lunged at you with her claws raised. You reacted quickly, raising your fists. It had not been the first time that you had had to defend yourself in the woods, and you would be ready. Her claws were poised right in front of your chest and your hands almost wrapped around her neck when she blinked, looked up at you, and smiled. She stepped back from you and waved cheerfully, leaving you utterly confused. "Hi!" she exclaimed. "You'll have to purrdon me for my rude greeting, but attack is a matter of instinct out here. My name is Nepeta Leijon. What's yours?"

You stared at her blankly for a moment before putting your hands, still curled around where her neck had been, back to your sides. "Er, my name is Equius Zahhak," you said. You had the brief instinct to shake her hand, but you knew what the result of that would be. Even at five sweeps, you were accidentally breaking bones with even casual grips. Instead, you nodded your head slightly. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Leijon."

"Hee hee, don't call me Miss Leijon! That sounds so formal. Nepeta will be just fine." She smiled brightly at you, revealing distinctly feline fangs. You resisted the urge to smile in return and reveal your own battered teeth, freshly regrowing from a recent robot brawl. "Equius, huh? Like a hoofbeast name! That's pretty neat!"

You blinked at her and then nodded. "Yes," you said, "it does have distinct connections to my fondness for equestrian beasts. I particularly like the musclebeasts that live around this area."

Nepeta blinked at you. "The musclebeasts? But don't you think that they're scary? I'm a bit of a huntress myself, but I wouldn't go up against one of those." She shivered. "They are big and mean and destroy everything in their path. It's really terfurrfying!"

You noted the odd puns she was making, then were quick to respond. "They are not nearly as aggressive or fearsome as one may think, and are often misunderstood as such," you objected. "They merely have great STRENGTH and thus cause a great deal of unintended collateral damage. They are rather gentle in their interactions and are in fact vegetarians." You looked away slightly, sure you were talking too much and sounding stupid. "I identify with them in some respects, and actually have one as a lusus."

"You have one as a LUSUS?" she exclaimed, tilting her head to the side. "But they're so strong! Didn't it hurt you when you were a little bitty wiggler?"

"No," you said reluctantly. "In fact, it was more Aurthor – my lusus- who had to fear me when I was growing up."

"Fear you? But you were just a little wiggler! What would a musclebeast have to worry about? You're making me pawsitively confused, Equius," she said, frowning.

"I- um…" You scratched your head nervously. "I am also quite STRONG, to such an extent that I tend to accidentally injure those I come into contact with. My lusus often sustained injuries from my carelessness."

"Ha! That's silly," she said, giggling at you. "There's no way you can be as strong as you say. You're probably just acting like a big silly manly man."

"I assure you, this is not an act," you said seriously. "Please, allow me to demonstrate." You looked at the huge carcass behind her, which she had apparently forgotten. "If I may inquire, what are you doing with that beast?"

"Huh? Oh!" She turned back on the huge dead animal and smiled proudly. "It's my latest purrey, taken down by the great huntress Nepeta herself!"

You looked over the animal and saw that it did in fact have strategic slashes on its body consistent with the girl's metal claws. "Impressive," you noted.

"Hee hee, thanks!" she giggled, then frowned. "But I'm having such a hard time moving him back to my cave. He wasn't too hard to take down, but he is reeeeaaaaalllllly heavy!"

You looked at the dead growlbeast and nodded. "Allow me to assist you," you said, approaching her kill.

"Assist me how, you-" She paused halfway through her sentence as she saw you lift the growlbeast high over your head with a single hand. She gaped at you, shocked. "Oh my God," she whispered. "You're…"

You winced as you expected her to call you what the others had. Weirdo. Freak. Monster. "You're… amazing!" she exclaimed, her eyes glittering with excitement. "I can't believe you can do that. That's soooo cool!"

"Oh," you said. You were at a loss. Never before had someone spoken positively of your strength, and a smile started to grow on your face. "Thank you, I suppose." You shifted the animal slightly in your hand. "To where would you like this beast transported?"

"Oh, my cave is right this way!" she said, pointing and grabbing your free hand with hers. Without another word, the two of you were running down the path together. You were carefully maneuvering the growlbeast, and she was grinning as she led you by the hand.

From there, the two of you became fast friends. Despite your numerous differences, you developed an easy, friendly rapport. You complemented her well, as your presence made her calmer and hers made you more easygoing. She often invited you to her cave, where she displayed her pelts and her strange "shipping" wall, which you regarded with distaste and fascination. Her feline lusus, which she whimsically called Pounce de Leon, took a quick liking to you. You sometimes invited her to your hive, where you showed her your array of robots and attempted to demonstrate your archery, while she valiantly tried not to giggle as you broke yet another bow. Despite her initial nervousness, she made fast friends with Aurthor. She soon took it upon herself to groom his coat and moustache, which he enjoyed immensely. In time, she became your only real close friend, and one of the only people you truly cared for.

Your morallegiance did not begin until half a sweep later. It began, as they often do, under unpleasant circumstances. You had attempted a social outing among other trolls, but as usual, you were not having the level of success that you would like. You had said something about the hemospectrum, what exactly you could no longer recall, and the yellowblood Captor had been put off by you. He approached Aradia, who you were beginning to have very conflicted feelings for. When you were out of earshot, he grinned at her and began to make smug little jokes about what a freak you were. You twitched in anger, but his comments were nothing new to you. But you began to notice something else. Something awful. Although Aradia told him to stop being so mean, she was putting her hand to her mouth. Smiling. Laughing along.

Aradia was laughing at you.

You couldn't bear the sight of it anymore. You bolted alone, deep into the nearby forest, not at all thinking about where you were going. You just needed to get away from it, get away from all of them. In your rush, your glasses slid down your nose. When you tried to adjust them, they snapped in half.

You stared at the broken glasses blankly. You were used to breaking your glasses. You had broken dozens of pairs before. But as you stared at the two broken halves, something in you snapped. Everything you had was broken. Your glasses were broken. Your creations were broken. Your ego was broken. You heart was broken.

You were broken.

All you were any good at was breaking things. All you could ever do right was break everything you touched. In a fit of rage and desperation, you decided that you would do the only thing you were good for. You would break everything.

Everything would be just as broken as you.

You don't remember things too clearly after that. Your only recollection was a burning need to destroy everything around you. You would see the wreckage later, in a more rational state of mind. You would see the dozen trees that had been around you, that you had reduced to splinters. You would see the animals that had been in your way that you, a vegetarian, had beaten into bloody piles of fur and bone. But your memory of that time was empty. You had stayed like that for minutes, or hours, you didn't really know. The next thing that you remember was a small feline troll calling your name, wrapping her little arms around you, asking you to please, please stop.

You had paused. You didn't remember who she was, or who you were, or what was happening. All that you knew was that this little troll clinging to you was something that you did not want to break.

Slowly, your fists unclenched, your muscles loosened, your body stopped shaking. You hugged her, only using a small percentage of your strength, but she broke two ribs and got dark green bruises everywhere your arms had touched. You apologized to her later, every time you saw her wince from the pain, but she only smiled and rolled her eyes at you. After about the twentieth apology, she laughed at you. "Stop apologizing, silly!" she said cheerily. "I'm tough! There's nothing I can't handle for my meowrail!" She realized what she said, and put a hand to her mouth. "I mean…. do you want to be my meowrail, Equius?"

Your heart melted. You wished you could have hugged her again, but you refused to hurt her again. Instead you just smiled at her, knowing that something beautiful was beginning. She realized it too, and she squealed and hugged you. It was your first hug as fully realized moirails, and as you would in the future, you kept your arms carefully at your sides, letting her hold you close.

Since then, just as she has strove to let you have a little fun, you have striven to keep her reasonable and safe, keeping her away from the dangerous and the corrupting. Sometimes she pouted like a wriggler and called you names, but still you held firm. You did not want to be a controlling tyrant, but if you did not look out for her safety, no one would. More often than not, your restrictions turned out to be well-reasoned. She had pitched such a fit when you refused to let her engage in FLARPing, but when her friends were left maimed, paralyzed, and dead in the aftermath, you knew that you had done the right thing.

You had to protect her. She is simply too precious to you to lose. Even here, dying on your knees, you are happy to know that she is in her room, hidden from danger. Safe.


	7. Smiling

It was through Nepeta that you began to interact in a more cordial way with the lower classes. You began to have civil conversations with low and midbloods, even making a pair of robotic legs for a polite lowblood named Tavros Nitram. You began to accept Vantas's orders without much question. Slowly, as the reality of your destroyed planet sunk in, you began to loosen your grip on the hemospectrum.

Maybe, you began to reason, it was an ideal for a different time and a different set of circumstances. Maybe, with only twelve of you left (eleven after Aradia's detonation), you would need to bond with all of the trolls around you, judging them based on their skills and personalities rather than on their color. Maybe it was time to let go.

And you almost did. But as Gamzee ran out of slime, things changed. He began to sit alone, left with nothing but his madness and messiahs, and he returned in a way that you could not resist. All of your resolve, all of your reasoning, all of the slow alliances you had built: it all dissolved into nothing the minute he set those eyes on you. One glance, and you were his willing slave all over again.

You never even had a chance.

You first found out about Gamzee's transformation through Karkat, who told you that he was going out to kill all of you and that you should kill him first. But you could not help but stare at the words in a sort of disbelieving reverence. Yes, of course you should stop him from murdering the other trolls, from thinning your numbers even further. Of course you should turn on him to protect your comrades.

And yet.

And yet you could not deny that a large part of you thrilled at the words, a larger part than you cared to admit. You couldn't deny the broken smile that began to spread across your face when Vantas told you about Gamzee's "breakdown". This could only mean one thing. The highblood had finally taken his place. Although you promised the angry little troll that you would prevent the highblood from causing further harm, your excitement seemed to spring unbidden from your trembling fingers. You had almost given up waiting for him.

Almost.

You had Nepeta hide before you went looking for him. You would not be able to live with yourself if your moirail were injured, even by the highblood. You made a point to say goodbye to her before she left, and she spread a smile across her face as she said that she would see you soon. You made your mouth express agreement with this, made your body cease its trembling. You wanted to hug her close before you left, but you know that would only hurt her further, and worry her as well. You let her think that you would be back soon.

You went off through the dark corridors, looking for the highblood, wondering what you would do when you found him. Would he be willing to listen your requests to spare the others? Would you be forced to subdue him physically? Would you be able to stop yourself from lowering yourself before him, tell him how you have waited for the day you could be his humble servant, waited for so long, and that you would do anything for him, anything-

You forced these thoughts from your mind, and by the time that you snapped back to reality, you were searching through the genetic labs. This area was unsettling in the best of times, and in the dark, knowing that the dangerous, ruthless, realized highblood was about, you could not help but tremble slightly, sweat slightly. It was from the fear, yes, but it was also from the anticipation. You did not know what you were anticipating exactly, but knowing that it was waiting for you in the shadows made you nervous and excited. Suddenly, from on top of one of the huge test tubes holding a monstrous animal inside, you saw a figure sitting, looking at you. In the dim light, red shades and a bright white grin were all that stood out against the shadowy form.

From the eyewear, you could tell it was Pyrope, a tealblooded blind girl with whom you occasionally interacted. You asked her if she had seen (or, in her case, smelled) the highblood about, trying to remain neutral and polite. But when she spoke, something was… odd. Although her voice sounded more or less the same in pitch, it fluctuated in volume, going between a soft tone and a scream. She laughed when she saw you, calling you a peasantblood, and you reacted with appropriate shock. You asked her if that was some kind of joke.

She laughed a little, and something was wrong. "IF YOUR BLOOD," she screamed, "is a motherfucking joke," she said softly, her voice slowly becoming strange and low, "SOON IT WILL BE RUNNING… through my motherfucking fingers."

You flinched. Although the tealblood did not have immaculate language, the level of profanity, not to mention the strange, unnerving threat, were quite unlike her. You decided to only mention the profanity. "You'll stop," you commanded.

"you'll…" she said quietly, the high, bubbly tone draining from her voice, replaced by something darker, more sinister, "KNEEL."

And when that word was shouted, it was no longer Terezi's voice. It wasn't her at all. It was something deep, amused, commanding. But it was familiar. You had heard it a thousand times in your darkest, sweetest dreams. The voice of the true highblood. The voice of your master.

You began to shake again, but you did all you could to stand tall, proud. "You are not Pyrope," you declared, your throat going dry. "You are the highblood, I… should have known." You looked up at the figure, Pyrope's glasses glinting at you as the wide white grin grew. You clenched your fists. No doubt he had murdered her. Although you had never been close with Pyrope, seeing him looking at you through those lenses made everything uncomfortably, horribly real. "Remove your counterfeit eyewear at once," you commanded angrily, realizing only after the words came out that you were even thinking them. _How dare you speak to your master this way?_ some dark, growing part of you hissed. Despite your desire to end the violence, you added a quick, meek, "if you please, sir," to the end of your sentence, trying to soften a blasphemous command to a polite request.

Laughing softly, he reached for her glasses. "i'll show you what I motherfucking got," he said, pulling them down slowly, revealing cruel, almost glowing eyes, "IF YOU SHOW ME WHAT'S MOTHERFUCKING YOURS."

"What?" you asked, unable to stop your voice from trembling. You had not taken off your glasses, shown your shameful and bloodshot eyes to anyone, at least not purposefully. Did he want you reveal your most embarrassing self to him? Did you dare to? Did you dare disobey?

Gamzee only grinned wider at your reaction. "it was. A MOTHERFUCKING. joke," he said, before honking loudly.

You had always found his little honks unnecessary and foolish, but now they simply chilled your blood. There was something intense and violent in them, something dangerous. You tried to clear your throat, tried to sound calm. "We really should talk."

He stared you down with those glowing yellow eyes. "you really should kneel," he said quietly, his tone serious and unamused.

You tried to pretend you didn't hear what he said. You tried as hard as you could to pretend that what he had said hadn't shaken you to your very core and made you want to drop to your knees before him. "What was that?" you asked, trying to keep the tremor out of your voice, trying so, so hard not to tremble. "The volume of your voice keeps fluctuating."

"I SAID," he screamed, purposely shouting before bringing his voice back down to a speaking voice as clear and piercing as a knife, "kneel, motherfucker."

You only stood there, frozen. You were yearning, and you were terrified. This was a murderer, and this was the highblood. Kneeling before him was everything you had ever wanted, but you had to stop this death, to save the others, to protect Nepeta. You had to be who you had been fighting to become…

The ideas swum in your head, and the highblood grew impatient with your pitiful conundrum. His eyes flashed open with anger as his loud command rang out. "I TOLD YOU TO MOTHERFUCKING KNEEL, MOTHERFUCKER," he shouted, and then one of your bows was in his hands. He drew an arrow back, and he had made the decision for you.

The pain was sudden, piercing, intense. It was not the worst that you had had, but as the arrow plunged all the way through your thigh, you gasped with shock as your leg collapsed beneath you. The fall forced you to kneel, and as you knelt on the ground, Gamzee approached you, honking with each step, completely and totally your master.

He spoke to you again, and while his voice was still fluctuating, his shout became a speaking voice, his speaking voice a mere whisper. "it's a shame that you didn't kneel on your own," he whispered, bending the bow in his paint-stained hands. "YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD SLAVE FOR THE DARK MOTHERFUCKING CARNIVAL." He smiled maniacally at you, breaking the bow. "but you didn't fucking kneel. " He looped the string of the bow around your throat. "SO YOU NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

"Highbl-" you started to say, but he shushed you gently as he wrapped more and more string around your throat. "don't speak, motherfucker," he whispered to you, beginning to pull the broken halves of the bow. "DON'T SAY A FUCKING WORD." He pulled it just a bit tighter, just enough for you to know it was there, and began to increase pressure so slowly that you could hardly feel it. "i know how you encouraged me to reach my motherfucking destiny. EVEN THOUGH I WAS TOO LOST IN THAT FUCKING POISON TO KNOW. i appreciate that at least one motherfucker knew his motherfucking place. SO YOUR DEATH IS GOING TO BE MOTHERFUCKING BEAUTIFUL," he said, jerking the bow halves a little so that your glasses began to slip off your face, revealing your eyes. He whispered to you, the grin growing on his face, as the strings around your neck grew painful and you could no longer breathe. "i am going to watch the light fade from your motherfucking eyes. YOU ARE MINE FOR THE REST OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE. and you will die at the feet of your master. DO YOU LIKE THAT, SLAVE?"

You attempted to nod, to show him that you would not stop him from killing you even if you could. He jerked your head back into place forcefully, the strings drawing blood as the world became hazy, and you did not resist. You should have fought back, but nothing in you can bear to. You never belonged anywhere as much as you belong right here. "don't worry about anything anymore," he says softly, so softly, as his arms flexed to kill you. "JUST SMILE."

So you smile. Dying on your knees, you smile. Blacking out from lack of oxygen, you smile. Having everything you are taken from you and everything you wanted given to you, you smile. As the person you can finally call your master stares at you and through you with those cruel and perfect eyes, you smile. You are broken and fulfilled, crying and claimed, and as you look up at him with tragic adoration, you smile. Even as the void finally overcomes you, it is enough to be his. You are still smiling when he drops your corpse to the floor.


End file.
